Maybe they originally had Aria shoot Shana and then realized it's way too dark a turn for her to take and changed her death to an accident.

The weirdest thing about this is that Spencer clearly should have been the first one to kill somebody

Long time PLL Annotations fan here, thank you for the good work. Things that are also good: your review.

They have upped the crazy to levels previously unseen this episode. Hope they keep it up. And questioning this is usually not a good idea.

It's kind of a retcon given that Wilden was previously revealed as the one who started the fire. Honestly the Shana reveal makes little sense to me (even though the parts with her in the hospital were pretty great).

SPENCER JUST USED 'BITCH' AS A PRONOUN I don't care what happens in the rest of this episode this is the best

It's rather obvious they have no idea about their own mystery and just throw this stuff out with a shrug. 'Maybe we will use this someday, maybe it's just a random thing, we'll decide later.'

I loved it too. If it's not the best episode of the show, it's definitely close. It angered a lot of fans on the TWoP boards though, apparently because it didn't move the plot forward. Which, if you're watching this show for the plot, I have no idea how you made it to fourth season.

Wow, didn't know that and she absolutely doesn't look the slightest bit black. Good to know, I suppose.

I think the Morello story will be discussed for a long time and deservedly so, because it's great. However, the thing that strikes me most about these episodes is that I find myself liking Piper more with every episode, even though her behavior is arguably getting worse. She's stripping away the layers of bullshit and…

The makeup. Three of them are Caucasian and Shay Mitchell is basically every race under the sun, including Asian.

Troian Bellisario will be 29 in the fall, but she's awesome so we pretend we don't see it.

I was pretty apathetic about that because basically everything about that storyline somehow leaked to the internet even before they revealed he's not really A. I hope that if they try to redeem him in season 5 (as they obviously will, he took a bullet for the girls so he must be a good person blah blah blah), they at…

Possibly. But it's so for a reason, there's no archetype more stale than the classic fantasy hero.

I think it suffers from being afraid to piss off its younger viewers and the last season has been disappointing because you can only make someone's love interest A and then take it back so many times. And I was even amongst the people who loved and defended season 3.

I, a Doctor Who fan, would argue that production value should be either an added bonus to already great things or a requirement to pull off certain other things that would not have worked without it. Not a sign of quality by itself.

I didn't think Ygritte was that interesting either, but even a little interesting puts you miles above Jon Snow. It's not Kit Harrington hatred, it's just that Snow is the most conventional character in the whole show and therefore the most boring one.

What happened this episode that could not have been predicted? In what way did Oberyn's death break the usual pattern of the show?

Well, it sucked less than I expected out of a full Wall episode and some of the deaths were kind of touching, but this episode was certainly meant for people other than me. I'd probably skip it upon rewatching the season, Blackwater it ain't.

Did Alison and Helena ever meet?